Stacey Abrams makes waves

The Georgia primaries wrap up today after weeks of early voting. Stacey Abrams, who is running without opposition for the Democratic nomination for Governor, has to stay relevant. So she says the State she seeks to govern, is the worst State in the country.

What Stacey Abrams says

Stacey Abrams made that remark at a fundraiser last weekend, according to NBC News. Republican Front-runner Brian Kemp says in his campaign that Georgia is the best State in the country to do business. But that might not appeal to a Stacey Abrams, given the Marxist ideology she embraces. So naturally she took exception:

I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live. … Now, somebody’s going to try to Politifact me on this — let me contextualize. When you’re No. 48 for mental health, when you’re No. 1 for maternal mortality, when you have an incarceration rate that’s on the rise and wages that are on the decline, then you are not the No. 1 place to live in the United States. But we can get there. You see, Georgia is capable of greatness. We just need greatness to be in our governor’s office.

Naturally NBC feels the need to support her remarks. So as evidence they cite:

• This Mental Health Association national rank chart of States, and
• An American Health Rankings chart ranking States for maternal mortality.

The MHA charts seem riddled with duplication and other errors. CNAV finds the American Health Rankings page very difficult to read. So teasing out the truth of the remarks by Stacey Abrams proves impossible.

How people react

Brian Kemp, for his part, flatly disputed her remarks. He said,

Georgia is the best State to live, work and raise a family. And … I will work every day from now until November to keep it that way for four more years!

Stephen Miller called her remarks “a contender for all-time worst campaign slogan.”

Brian Kilmeade, on Fox and Friends, called it “very odd” for Stacey Abrams to say something like that.

David Perdue had the most scathing rebuttal, and immediately the Mainstream Media called him racist for saying it. Specifically he said:

Hey, she ain’t from here. Let her go back where she came from. She doesn’t like it here.

He didn’t mean Africa. Rather, he meant either Wisconsin, where she was born, or Mississippi, where she grew up. Stacey Abrams has been a resident of Georgia since high school.

Perdue also referred to some remarks she made four years ago, in the race she never conceded to Brian Kemp. The New York Post quotes him:

When she told Black farmers, “You don’t need to be on the farm,” and she told Black workers in hospitality and all this, “You don’t need to be” — she is demeaning her own race when it comes to that.

Brian Kemp apparently led David Perdue widely in early voting. Can Perdue catch up in in-person voting today? We shall see.

Other primaries

The excitement that Stacey Abrams and David Perdue has raised, seems to distract from other Georgia primary races. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of course, is seeking renomination in her Georgia district. The Georgia Senate race is a crowded field, too. Rafael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, has a single challenger. Herschel Walker has five other contenders for the Republican nomination. But polls show he will win that nomination easily.

Polls close at 7:00 p.m. EDT.

Portrait of Stacey Abrams

The featured portrait is a screencap from a YouTube video by The Circus. Per the Standard YouTube license, this carried a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.